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With equity indexes recently hitting five-year highs, it's time to ask: Are there more gains ahead for the stock market, or is another nasty reversal like 2008's in store? Some investors look to the so-called smart money for guidance.

Websites such as GuruFocus (gurufocus.com) and Nasdaq (nasdaq.com) have just published the latest trading records received from the Securities and Exchange Commission for company insiders and investors with positions of 5% or more in a given stock. The data end with December, but the information still is actionable, says GuruFocus founder Charlie Tian, as both types of investors typically hold their positions for more than a year.

U.S. and Asian companies with $1 billion to $10 billion in market value have been receiving the most attention from guru investors recently. The gurus' sales and purchases have focused on economically sensitive industrials and consumer-discretionary companies, and shares of computer makers and banks.

Interpreting these broad signals requires deeper research into individual stocks, but there is plenty of time to dig in. Investors can take weeks or months to establish, or exit, large positions, notes Jared Levy, senior equity strategist for Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Nobody follows gurus more closely than their peers, and nimble individuals have time to jump in, he says, before hedge funds and mutual funds establish follow-on positions that exaggerate the guru's original bet.

Shares traded by corporate insiders, typically in smaller lots, might have less impact on a stock's price, but are complementary indicators. A decade's worth of SEC data reveals that insiders are good at guessing the direction their companies' shares will take, says Tian, of GuruFocus. The Insider Trends page reports on insider sentiment by sector.

Two-dozen charts indicate the buy/sell ratios of insider trades for the broad market in each of 10 Standard & Poor's 500 sectors. Separate charts break out the monthly buy/sell ratios of executive officers; history suggests they are especially prescient about their companies' shares. Insiders in the communications and energy sectors—CEOs, in particular—have been buying lately. GuruFocus also reports on "double buys"—stocks bought or sold by both insiders and notable investors.

VALIDEA'S WEBSITE (validea.com) hypothesizes about what gurus might say of a stock if you could ask them. Nine of the most popular guru investing strategies have been distilled into models subscribers can use to measure the prospects for 6,500 individual stocks and industries. Validea's Top Industries page highlights the 25 industries with the largest number of stocks registering "strong interest" among these strategies. The current list includes the retailing, chemicals, and transportation industries.

Access to such content requires a $270 annual subscription. But the Nasdaq Website (nasdaq.com/investing/guru/guru-stock-screener.aspx) hosts a free Validea stock screener that visitors can use to measure guru interest for individual stocks. Nasdaq also tracks up to a year of insider buys and sells in great detail for free.

TO HELP LOCK IN gains, ExitPoint.com has just added a new battery of stop-loss alerts that can be triggered by reversals in any major market index a user selects. For example, subscribers to the $131-a-year service could set a stop-loss alert that would be triggered if the S&P 500's 20-day moving average falls 10%.

Many institutional market strategists are forecasting a continued rise in the S&P 500 through year end. But it pays to keep frequent track of the index nonetheless.